Communication Accommodation Theory

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DOI: 10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect056

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3 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the
Theory

Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

Several years ago, one of our partners had a temporary condition that left her
unable to speak louder than a whisper. Much to her surprise, when she spoke,
others would respond to her in a whisper, despite having no such condition
themselves. Why? Simply put, in interaction, we adjust and adapt to our
fellow speakers. Communicative adjustment is ubiquitous and constitutes a
fundamental, and arguably necessary, part of successful social interaction (see
Chapter 1, this volume). Upon entering a communicative encounter, people
immediately (and often unconsciously) begin to synchronize aspects of their
verbal (e.g., accent, speech rate) and nonverbal behavior (e.g., gesture,
posture). These adjustments are at the core of communication
accommodation theory (CAT).
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of how, when, and why
people adjust, or “accommodate,” to one another during social interaction,
and what the social consequences of those adjustments are. In the sections
that follow, we first introduce the different adjustment strategies people may
enact during interaction, as well as distinguish between objective and
subjective measures of accommodation. Next, we examine the motivations
underlying communicative adjustment, noting the ways in which they are
shaped by the context in which the interaction is embedded. We then discuss
the social consequences of communicative adjustment, as well as factors that
moderate people’s evaluations. Finally, we present a number of heuristic
principles addressing accommodation.

Adjustment Strategies and Types of Adjustment

Convergence, Divergence, and Maintenance

Early CAT research focused primarily on objective speech variables and
identified three basic ways in which people can adjust their communicative
behaviors relative to one another: convergence, divergence, and maintenance
(for a brief history of the historical development of CAT, see the Foreword,
this volume). Convergence refers to adjusting one’s communicative behaviors
36
to be more similar to another’s. Convergence has been studied extensively in
laboratory as well as naturalistic settings. Recently, researchers have
increasingly begun to examine convergence in mediated and online
environments as well (e.g., Riordan, Markman, & Stewart, 2013). For
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 37

instance, DanescuNiculescu-Mizil, Gamon, and Dumais (2011) investigated

adjustment on Twitter and found that users regularly converged to one
another in their tweets on a wide range of linguistic features, despite the
limitations posed by this particular social medium. Interestingly, people have
been shown to converge not only toward human, but also toward computer
conversational partners (but see Beckner, Ràcz, Hay, Brandstetter, &
Bartneck, 2016). For instance, when interacting with computer-animated
personas, children have been shown to converge in terms of both speech
amplitude (Coulston, Oviatt, & Darves, 2002) and response latencies (Darves
& Oviatt, 2002).
Divergence refers to adjusting one’s communicative behaviors to be more
dissimilar to another’s. For example, Bourhis and Giles (1977) found that
when an English speaker described Welsh as a “dying language with a dismal
future,” Welsh participants overwhelmingly broadened their Welsh accents
and some even introduced Welsh vocabulary into their responses. Finally,
maintenance refers to sustaining one’s “default” level of communicating,
without adjusting for others. For example, Bourhis (1984) had a female
confederate approach bilingual (English-French) pedestrians in downtown
Montreal (Quebec) to ask for directions in either English or French. When the
request was voiced in French, nearly half of the Anglophone pedestrians
nonetheless responded in English (i.e., maintenance of default language).
Convergence and divergence can each take multiple forms (Gallois &
Giles, 1998), depending on the social value, degree, symmetry, modality, and
duration of the behavior. Below we discuss each of these distinctions.
Upward/Downward. When the dimension of adjustment has some social
value, adjustment can be conceptualized as upward or downward (Giles &
Powesland, 1975). Upward adjustment refers to shifts toward a more
prestigious variety of speech, whereas downward adjustment refers to shifts
toward a less prestigious, or even stigmatized, variety. For instance, so-called
standard accents (e.g., Standard American English) are typically judged as
more prestigious than “nonstandard” accents, which include most regional
(e.g., southern accent in the U.S.) ethnic (e.g., African-American Vernacular
English) and foreign varieties in a given society (e.g., Spanish accent in the
U.S.) (Dragojevic, Giles, & Watson, 2013). Accordingly, a nonstandard
speaker matching another’s standard accent is an example of upward
convergence, whereas a standard speaker matching another’s nonstandard
accent is an example of downward convergence (see Willemyns, Gallois,
Callan, & Pittam, 1997). Conversely, accentuating one’s own nonstandard
accent with a standardaccented speaker is an example of downward
divergence, whereas adopting a standard-accent with a nonstandard-accented
speaker is an example of upward divergence.
Full/Partial. Adjustment can also be described as either full or partial
(Bradac, Mulac, & House, 1988). For instance, a speaker initially exhibiting a
rate of 100 words per minute may increase his speed to match exactly another
speaker’s rate of 200 words per minute (full convergence) or may increase his
rate to 150 words per minute to only partially match her rate (Street, 1982).
38 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

Similarly, interactants may diverge from one another to varying degrees,

ranging from partial (e.g., code-switching for a few words) to full divergence
(e.g., speaking an entirely different language).
Symmetrical/Asymmetrical. Sometimes adjustment is symmetrical and one
person’s communicative moves are reciprocated by the other. For instance,
Nelson, Dickson, & Hargie (2003) reported how both Catholic and Protestant
children in Northern Ireland avoided sensitive topics (e.g., religion, politics)
during interreligious conversations, citing this as a way to avoid conflict and
promote group harmony. At other times, however, one person’s
communicative moves are not reciprocated by the other. Indeed, convergence
is often directed toward those with greater power (without reciprocation by
the highpower speaker); such shifts tend to asymmetrical. For example, van
den Berg (1986) noted that salespersons in Taiwan were more likely to
converge to shoppers than vice versa. A similar pattern of asymmetrical
accommodation occurs frequently in male–female interactions, where women
converge to men more often than men converge to women (e.g., Namy,
Nygaard, & Sauerteig, 2002). However, and as discussed later, in such cases
asymmetrical accommodation may more accurately be described as
“complementarity,” and be perceived positively by both parties (Giles, 1980).
Unimodal/Multimodal. Adjustment on some communicative features does
not necessarily mean the speaker will adjust on all available variables and
dimensions. Accordingly, CAT distinguishes between unimodal and
multimodal adjustments. The former refers to shifts on only a single
dimension (e.g., accent) whereas the latter refers to shifts on multiple
dimensions simultaneously (e.g., accent, posture, eye gaze). For example, in
the Bourhis and Giles (1977) study described earlier, Welsh participants who
responded to the threatening English person by only broadening their Welsh
accents were engaging in unimodal divergence, whereas those who
broadened their Welsh accents as well as introduced Welsh vocabulary into
their responses were engaging in multimodal divergence.
Owing to the fact that adjustment can take place on multiple dimensions,
convergence and divergence are not mutually exclusive strategies and both
may be enacted simultaneously (Gallois, Ogay, & Giles, 2005). For example,
Bilous and Krauss (1988) found that women converged toward men’s
utterance length, interruptions, and pauses, but diverged on backchannels and
laughter. Relatedly, Zilles and King (2005) showed how immigrant German
women in Brazil simultaneously accommodated to host language features and
emphasized their Germanic linguistic origins.
Short-term/Long-term. Adjustment can also vary in its duration.
Sometimes adjustment toward a particular style is short-lived and occurs
during only one or a few social interactions (short-term). Other times,
adjustment toward a particular style is more sustained and occurs repeatedly
over multiple interactions (long-term). For instance, Pardo, Gibbons, Suppes,
and Krauss (2012) examined accommodation among unacquainted male
roommates over the course of an academic year and found that mutual
convergence not only increased over that period but also was resistant to
decay across breaks in exposure (see also Sancier & Fowler, 1997).
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 39

The distinction between short- and long-term accommodation has been

particularly useful in explaining dialect change (Trudgill, 1981, 1986).
Specifically, whereas short-term accommodation toward a particular style
may lead to transitory changes in a person’s habitual speech, long-term
accommodation toward that style may ultimately result in permanent changes
to a person’s speech. For instance, a young Russian-accented immigrant’s
repeated convergence to a Californian accent may, over time, permanently
change his or her habitual accent so that it becomes indistinguishable from
other Californians. A similar process underlies community-level dialect
change, wherein regional minorities typically engage in long-term
accommodation to the language style of the majority (Nilsson, 2015; Trudgill,
1986). In this sense, then, (long-term) accommodation is a basic mechanism
underlying language change.

Psychological, Subjective, and Objective Accommodation

Sometimes speakers’ motives and intentions to accommodate and their actual

communicative behaviors are congruent. At other times, however, they are
incongruent. To account for this potential discrepancy, Thakerar, Giles, and
Cheshire (1982) distinguished between psychological accommodation – that
is, speakers’ motives and intentions to adjust their communication – and
linguistic accommodation – that is, speakers’ actual speech behavior. For
example, in many role-discrepant situations, dissimilarities are not only
acceptable but also expected (Grush, Clore, & Costin, 1975). Thus, a job
interviewee wishing to accommodate to her interviewer (i.e., psychological
convergence) may do so by not assuming the directive, interrogative language
of the interviewer (i.e., linguistic convergence), but rather by crafting a more
tempered and cooperative communicative style (i.e., linguistic divergence).
Similarly, psychological divergence can sometimes be enacted precisely
through linguistic convergence. In this vein, Woolard (1989) reported that
when Castilian speakers converged to Catalan during conversations with
Catalan speakers, they received replies in Castilian. Although both Castilian
and Catalan speakers converged to one another in their respective choices of
language, Catalan speakers’ convergent behavior (i.e., switching to Castilian)
actually represented psychological divergence in an attempt to emphasize
intergroup differences and boundaries (i.e., not allowing an outgroup to use
Catalan).
Thakerar et al. (1982) further distinguished linguistic accommodation as
being objective – that is, directly observable or measurable shifts in behavior
– and/or subjective – that is, individuals’ perceptions of behavioral shifts.
Like its psychological and linguistic counterparts, objective and subjective
accommodation are not always aligned. For example, speakers may perceive
their behavior as convergent when, in fact, it is objectively divergent. In this
vein, Thakerar et al. (1982) observed that, in dyads characterized by status
inequality, high-status participants slowed their speech rates and made their
accents less standard, whereas low-status speakers increased their speech
40 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

rates and made their accents more standard. Although both were objectively
diverging from one another, each perceived that they were converging.
In the previous example, both high- and low-status speakers were likely
adjusting their communication to their (status-based) expectations of their
conversational partners. Indeed, people often adjust their communication
toward where they believe others are communicatively, rather than were they
actually are (Thakerar et al., 1982). Although sometimes people’s
expectations of how others will behave and their actual behaviors are one and
the same, other times they may be incongruent. Such erroneous expectations
are especially likely to occur during intergroup encounters – that is, situations
in which people define one another primarily in terms of their social identities
(i.e., social group memberships) rather than their personal identities (i.e.,
idiosyncratic characteristics) – because social categorization depersonalizes
people’s perceptions of others and leads to stereotyped expectations
(Dragojevic & Giles, 2014; Hogg & Reid, 2006). Expectations based on
stereotypes can lead speakers to overadjust (i.e., overaccommodate) or not
adjust sufficiently (i.e., underaccommodate) their communicative behaviors
relative to their interlocutors (see Chapter 5, this volume). For instance,
Bayard (1995) found that women and men swore at similar rates during intra
gender conversations, but that women swore more than men (i.e.,
overaccommodated) during inter gender conversations, presumably because
they expected (in this case erroneously) men to swear more than women.

Accommodation Strategies
Adjustment can also be conceptualized in terms of its focus or goal relative to
a conversational partner’s needs and characteristics (Coupland, Coupland,
Giles, & Henwood, 1988), in at least five ways. First, when interactants focus
their attention on their partners’ productive language and communication,
they can employ approximation strategies, which involve (as earlier)
adjusting their verbal and nonverbal behaviors toward (convergence) or away
from (divergence) their interlocutor (see Giles & Wadleigh, 2008; McGlone
& Giles, 2011). Most CAT research has focused on these strategies. Second,
when interactants focus on their partners’ ability to comprehend what is being
said, they can employ interpretability strategies, such as decreasing the
diversity of their vocabulary, simplifying syntax, or becoming louder in order
to increase clarity and comprehension. Third, when speakers are focused on
their partners’ macro-conversational needs, they can employ discourse
management strategies. These include regulating speaking turns and selecting
or selecting conversational topics of mutual interest or concern. Fourth, when
speakers are focused on role relationships within an interaction, they may
adopt interpersonal control strategies, such as the use of interruptions or
honorifics, to remind the partner of their relative status or role. Fifth and
finally, when speakers are concerned about another’s feelings, they can
employ emotional expressions, such as conveying reassurance and comfort
(see Williams, Giles, Coupland, Dalby, & Manasse, 1990; Watson, Angus,
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 41

Gore, & Farmer, 2015). Just as speakers can converge and diverge on
different dimensions at the same time, speakers can adopt multiple strategies
simultaneously – for example, one could simplify an explanation to aid
interpretability and to remind a subordinate of their social position – and what
goals or characteristics speakers attend to may vary over the course of an
interaction (Gallois et al., 2005; Jain & Krieger, 2011).

Motives for Adjustment

Sometimes we adapt our communication to our fellow speakers
unconsciously and automatically. Other times, these adjustments are
conscious and deliberate. CAT proposes two distinct motives for adjusting
communication (Giles, Scherer, & Taylor, 1979). The first is an affective
(identity maintenance) motive, related to managing identity concerns. The
second is a cognitive (organizational) motive, related to managing
comprehension and communicative efficiency. The two motives are not
mutually exclusive, and communicative behaviors may be motivated by both
types of concerns.

Affective Motives
CAT is premised on the assumption that communication conveys not only
referential, but also social and relational information. CAT also assumes, per
social identity theory (SIT: Tajfel & Turner, 1986), that the self-concept
consists of personal (i.e., idiosyncratic characteristics) and social (i.e., social
group memberships) identity components, and that people want to create and
maintain positive personal and social identities. Following from this, CAT
posits that speakers can pursue positive personal and social identities by
communicatively regulating social distance and, thus, signaling their attitudes
toward each other as individuals and group members.
Cooperative accommodation (including convergence) is motivated by a
desire for social approval from one’s interlocutors, as a means to positively
reinforce one’s own personal and/or social identity. Following the
similarityattraction paradigm (Byrne, 1971; see also, Sprecher, 2014), CAT
posits that speakers can increase personal and social liking and gain others’
social approval by becoming communicatively more similar to them (i.e.,
converging) (see Wang & Fussell, 2010). For example, speakers may
converge to their interlocutors’ idiosyncratic communicative behaviors (e.g.,
speech rate, gestures) so as to appear more similar to them and thus engender
liking. Indeed, Natalé (1975) found that speakers with a high need for social
approval converged to their conversational partners’ vocal intensity and pause
length to a greater extent than did those with a low need for social approval.
That said, accommodative moves may also be fashioned by disingenuous
motives, such as the desire to exploit one’s interlocutor (see Giles, Ota, &
Foley, 2013). Speakers may also converge to their interlocutors’ socially
marked communicative behaviors (e.g., accent, dialect) to signal that they
belong to the same social group and, thus, secure potential social reward (cf.
42 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

Tajfel & Turner, 1986). For example, Tamburrini, Cinnirella, Jansen, and
Bryden (2015) found that Twitter users converged to the language style of
other members who belonged the same online social communities (e.g.,
Twilight fans), presumably to indicate common ingroup membership.
Non-cooperative accommodation (including divergence and maintenance)
is generally motivated by a desire to emphasize distinctiveness from one’s
interlocutors, as a means to differentiate oneself from relevant outgroups and
positively reinforce one’s own personal and/or social identity (Giles,
Coupland, & Coupland, 1991). For example, Berger and Heath (2008) noted
that people often diverged in terms of clothing and apparel from select others
to avoid signaling socially undesirable group identities (e.g., geek).
Additionally, members of ethnic and social minorities may emphasize
features of their own (perhaps stigmatized) dialects when they become aware
and proud of their cultural identity, as did the Welsh speakers in response to
an English person derogating their language described earlier (Bourhis &
Giles, 1977). Speakers may also diverge from their interlocutors’
idiosyncratic communicative behaviors as a way to signal their disapproval of
others as individuals. For instance, Putnam and Street (1984) found that when
interviewees were instructed to act out being dislikeable, they diverged from
their interviewers on a variety of non-content speech features.
Although these distinctions and patterns appear straightforward, the actual
dynamics of conversation are often far more complex. People belong to many
different social groups and, in a given situation, are likely to share some (e.g.,
ethnicity, age) but not all of these identities (e.g., gender) with their
interlocutors. Furthermore, these different identities are likely to vary in
salience across different encounters, as well as at different points within the
same encounter, with accommodative moves following accordingly. For
instance, Jones, Gallois, Barker, and Callan (1994) found that, in an academic
setting, ethnic group membership did not predict communicative behavior,
but professional group membership did.

Cognitive Motives
In addition to the identity maintenance concerns outlined earlier, CAT posits
that communicative adjustment may also be motivated by a desire to regulate
comprehension and increase communicative efficiency (Thakerar et al.,
1982). Motivated as such, speakers can assess their interlocutors’
communicative needs and characteristics, and adjust their speech to be more
(or less) intelligible, predictable, and comprehensible. Indeed, converging to a
common linguistic style often improves communicative effectiveness and has
been associated with increased predictability of the other and, in turn,
reduced uncertainty, interpersonal anxiety, and increased mutual
understanding (e.g., Gudykunst, 1995).
Comprehension can also be facilitated through divergent shifts (Street &
Giles, 1982). For instance, speakers may diverge from their interlocutors to
encouragethe lattertoadopt a more effective communicative style–
forinstance, by slowing down one’s speech in order to re-calibrate an overly
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 43

fast-talking partner (Brown, Giles, & Thakerar, 1982). Similarly, therapists

may diverge from their patients by decreasing the amount of talking they do,
to encourage patients to talk more (Matarazzo, Weins, Matarazzo, & Saslow,
1968).
Divergence can also be used to indicate that certain spheres of knowledge
and behaviors may not be shared among interactants, with the goal of
preventing misunderstandings or misattributions. For instance, non-native
speakers sometimes deliberately “self-handicap” (Weary & Arkin, 1981) by
broadening their accent when talking to native speakers in their host
community. Such a divergent shift signals that they are not members of or
familiar with the host community, and that any norms they violate should be
attributed to their ignorance and non-nativeness, rather than to malevolent
intent. In some situations, speakers may also diverge from others
intentionally with the goal of making communication problematic (Giles et
al., 1991).
Motivational Processes
CAT conceptualizes motivation as an emergent process that can dynamically
change during the course of interaction. People enter a given communicative
encounter with an initial orientation. As the interaction progresses, this initial
orientation is transformed into a psychological accommodative stance, based
on the salience of different identities and interactants’ perceptions of their
own and others behaviors.
Initial orientation. How people initially adjust their communication is a
function of their initial orientation, or their predisposition to construe one
another in interpersonal or intergroup terms in conjunction with their initial
intentions with respect to accommodation (Gallois et al., 2005). CAT
proposes several macro-level factors that can influence interactants’ initial
orientation, including interpersonal history, sociocultural norms and values,
and the current and past state of relevant intergroup relations.
Interpersonal history. Interactants’ interpersonal history can vary in terms
of duration – that is, from no contact (e.g., meeting someone for the first time)
to a long-term relationship (e.g., a married couple) – and in terms of valance
– that is, from predominantly negative to predominantly positive. When
interactants share a positive interpersonal history, they are more likely to
adopt an interpersonal orientation and converge toward one another. In
contrast, when their interpersonal history is negative, they are more likely to
diverge from one another (Gallois et al., 2005).
Sociocultural norms. Sociocultural norms and values specify with whom,
when, and how it is appropriate to interact. As such, they not only
circumscribe the available opportunities for intergroup contact, but also shape
interactants’ behaviors. For instance, sociocultural norms often specify what
(sort of) language is appropriate to speak in a given situation (Gallois &
Callan, 1991). One such norm is the expectation that speakers will converge
to those who speak the “standard,” or prestige variety of a language (e.g.,
Standard American English), particularly in status-stressing situations, such
as a job interview (Giles & Marlow, 2011). The tendency to treat others in
44 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

interpersonal versus intergroup terms is also likely to vary culturally.

Collectivist cultures tend to share strong beliefs about ingroup identification
and loyalty, emphasize group identity over personal identity, and perceive
relatively firm intergroup boundaries. In contrast, individualistic cultures tend
to have weaker beliefs about ingroup identification and loyalty, emphasize
personal over group identity, and perceive intergroup boundaries as relatively
permeable. As a result, members of collectivistic cultures tend to be less
receptive to convergence from outgroup speakers and are more likely to
diverge from them than are members of individualistic cultures (e.g., Aritz &
Walker, 2010). In this vein, Ross and Shortreed (1990) noted that when non-
native speakers in Japan attempt to converge linguistically toward their
Japanese interlocutors, they sometimes receive replies in English rather than
Japanese. In other words, when cultural boundaries are strongly adhered to,
attempts to cross them may be unwelcome.
Intergroup relations. Current and past relations between social groups can
also be an important determinant of whether people initially construe one
another in interpersonal or intergroup terms (see Dragojevic & Giles, 2014),
and whether they are motivated to converge or diverge. When interactants
belong to groups that have historically been involved in hostile or violent
relations, they are more likely to construe the encounter in intergroup terms
and to diverge from one another as a way to emphasize their valued ingroup
identity. One important construct in the analysis of the relations between
cultural and ethnic groups is ethnolinguistic vitality (Giles, Bourhis, &
Taylor, 1977; Giles & Johnson, 1981). A group’s vitality is determined by
three factors: its status (i.e., economical and sociocultural prestige),
demography (i.e., number and distribution of speakers), and the degree of
institutional support (i.e., representation in social institutions such as
education or government) it enjoys. Although many dimensions of vitality
can be measured objectively, interlocutors’ perceptions of their respective
groups’ vitalities are better predictors of their attitudes during interaction
(Giles et al., 1977). CAT posits that historically strong collectives (i.e., high
vitality groups) are more likely to diverge in intergroup situations. Moreover,
members who have a strong attachment and loyalty to their ingroup group
(i.e., high ingroup identification) are more likely to diverge than those who
have only a weak attachment. In this vein, Giles and Johnson (1987) found
that Welsh participants who were strongly identified with the ingroup
diverged from a threatening English person even when their sense of group
vitality was low. However, for those Welsh participants who only moderately
identified with the ingroup, a sense of high ingroup vitality was required for
divergence. CAT also suggests that divergence is more likely to occur when
group members feel that their status in the intergroup hierarchy is illegitimate
and unfair (see also, Vincze & Henning-Lindblom, in press).
Psychological accommodative stance. Once people begin to interact, their
initial orientation is transformed into their psychological accommodative
stance, or their immediate and ongoing intentions with respect to
accommodation (Gallois et al., 2005). A speaker’s accommodative stance is
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 45

shaped by their perception of the salience of personal and social identities in

the interaction, as well as their perceptions of their partners’ motives and
behaviors. In this respect, one’s stance is dynamic and has the potential to
shift on an ongoing basis throughout the encounter (see Genesee & Bourhis,
1982), as interlocutors react and respond to perceptions of each other’s
behaviors, needs, and motives. For instance, an initially accommodative
stance can quickly become nonaccommodative when one of a speaker’s
social identities becomes salient and they wish to positively differentiate
themselves from their partner on this dimension. In this vein, Bourhis, Giles,
Leyens, and Tajfel (1979) found that when a French confederate asked
trilingual (Flemish-EnglishFrench) Flemish students a content-neutral
question in English, the students converged to English. However, when the
French confederate diverged into French to voice an ethnically threatening
question, the Flemish students overwhelmingly diverged into Flemish and
vehemently disagreed with the French confederate’s statements. In other
words, the French confederate’s threatening question changed the Flemish
students’ initially accommodative orientation into a nonaccommodative one.

Constraints on Adjustment
There is an inherent tension between people’s motivation to adjust and their
ability to adjust (Beebe & Giles, 1984). In other words, regardless of
motivation, whether, how, and to what extent people adjust their
communication depends, in part, on their ability to perform the behavior in
the first place. A number of factors can constrain people’s ability to
accommodate.
First, adjustment is necessarily constrained by one’s communicative
repertoire, or the set of verbal, nonverbal, and paralinguistic features that they
are able to produce and have at their disposal (Gumperz, 1964, 1965).
Accommodation within one’s existing repertoire involves altering the usage
frequency of variants already within one’s control, whereas accommodation
outside one’s speech repertoire involves the adoption of totally new forms
(Trudgill, 1986). A speaker’s communicative repertoire can constrain
accommodation by determining which communicative features (e.g., words,
gestures) he or she is familiar with and, thus, able to accommodate with
relative ease (Beebe & Giles, 1984). However, speakers may also
accommodate outside their repertoire. Indeed, the acquisition of new forms is
not only possible, but also ubiquitous and, arguably, necessary for successful
interaction. Nonetheless, because the adoption of new forms may take
considerably more effort and time, we argue that people are more likely to
accommodate (at least initially) using existing features within their
repertoires, rather than to adopt new features outside their repertoires.
Consistent with this argument, Bigham (2010) found that Southern Illinoisan
university students accommodated to Northern forms primarily by reducing
the range or redistributing the frequency of vowels they used within their
existing repertoires, rather than by adopting entirely new (Northern) forms.
46 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

When situations require linguistic accommodation outside speakers’

repertoire, they may switch to an emphasis on the affective, rather than the
cognitive, motives: Gasiorek, Van de Poel, and Blockmans (2015) found that
when doctors in a multilingual hospital setting could not linguistically
accommodate their patients, they tried to use alternative modes of
communication (e.g., gestures, relying on an electronic translation tool) and
emphasized the social and relational aspects of the interaction.
Second, there are physiological constraints on people’s ability to
accommodate, particularly with regard to the adoption of novel linguistic
forms outside their repertoires. For instance, regardless of motivation, a
severely autistic individual may never be able to acquire certain
communicative skills. Physiological constraints are especially pertinent to the
production of different speech sounds. The human vocal apparatus is
structurally universal and, assuming no developmental handicaps, we are all
born with the ability to perceive and produce the full range of possible sounds
(see Kuhl, 2004; Kuhl & Iverson, 1995). However, as we learn to speak
particular languages and dialects, we restrict ourselves to those sounds and
our ability to perceptually differentiate and successfully produce other sounds
slowly begins to atrophy over time. As a result, past a certain age, it becomes
increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to successfully and consistently adopt
accents different from one’s own (LippiGreen, 2012). This is precisely the
reason why most people who learn a second language late in life are rarely (if
ever) able to achieve native-like pronunciation and, thus, may never be able
to fully converge to native speakers. Indeed, even among young children,
certain types of complex phonological differentiation may never be
accommodated successfully (see Trudgill, 1981).
Third, peoples’ ability to accommodate on different dimensions is
constrained by the communication medium. The communication medium
necessarily determines which and how many dimensions are available for
adjustment. For instance, whereas it is possible to converge toward another’s
accent, eye gaze, and gestures during face-to-face interactions, these
dimensions are unavailable in most types of computer-mediated-
communication (e.g., email, Twitter).

Outcomes of Adjustment
As outlined earlier, CAT proposes that speakers form judgments of each
other, and each others’ communication, on the basis of the accommodation
they perceive; these judgments also inform speakers’ desire to engage in
future interaction. Most CAT work to date has focused on evaluations (of the
speaker and of the quality of communication) as outcomes of
accommodation; however, other correlates studied include compliance,
credibility, and relational solidarity (see Soliz & Giles, 2014).
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 47

General Patterns
Convergence typically elicits favorable evaluations, particularly when it is
symmetrical (Richmond & McCroskey, 2000), and has been shown to
increase a speaker’s perceived attractiveness (e.g., Street, Brady, & Putnam,
1983), intelligibility (Triandis, 1960), interpersonal involvement (LaFrance,
1979), and perceived competence and credibility (Aune & Kikuchi, 1993), as
well as to facilitate compliance (Buller, LePoire, Aune, & Eloy, 1992), build
rapport (Acosta & Ward, 2011; Crook & Booth, 1997), and increase relational
solidarity (Imamura, Zhang, & Harwood, 2011). Convergence has also been
linked to increased agreement between coalition partners during online
multiparty negotiations (Huffaker, Swaab, & Diermeier, 2011), more
successful negotiations between police negotiators and hostage takers (Taylor
& Thomas, 2008), more positive attitudes toward and increased intention to
purchase products (Run & Fah, 2006), improved polling figures for
politicians converging to opponents in American Presidential debates
(Romero, Swaah, Uzzi, & Galinsky, 2015), and more prosocial behavior in
general (Kulezsa, Dolinski, Huisman, & Majewski, 2014). Interestingly, the
relatively consistent and broad positive implications of convergence have
recently served as an impetus for the development of more “human”
computer systems that are able to accommodate to their users. For example,
Acosta and Ward (2001) developed a spoken dialog system they named
“Gracie,” which is capable of recognizing users’ emotional state from speech
and responding with appropriate emotional coloring. An evaluation of this
system showed that, consistent with CAT’s propositions, respondents felt
significantly more rapport with Gracie than with either of two controls.
In contrast, divergence and maintenance tend to be associated with
negative relational outcomes and are often characterized as insulting,
impolite, or hostile (Deprez & Persoons, 1984; Sandilands & Fleury, 1979).
For instance, speakers who deviate from the standard language by
maintaining or diverging toward nonstandard varieties (e.g., a Birmingham
accent in the UK; African American Vernacular English in the USA) are
typically evaluated less favorably on status (e.g., intelligent) and solidarity
(e.g., friendly) traits than those who converge (Giles & Watson, 2013).
Although this pattern is seen worldwide, the severity of negative evaluations
can vary across different groups and cultures. In general, members of low
vitality and stigmatized ethnolinguistic groups who fail to accommodate to
the standard language tend to garner more negative evaluations than members
of high vitality groups. However, when a high-vitality group is perceived to
pose a threat to the majority, its members may suffer more extreme sanctions
than members of low vitality groups due to the former’s relatively higher
(perceived) influence within society (Ryan, Hewstone, & Giles, 1984).
Negative outcomes stemming from linguistic divergence/maintenance often
go beyond mere speaker evaluations and can have important real-world
consequences. Examples of these include discrimination in the workplace
(Lippi-Green, 1994) and housing (Purnell, Isdardi, & Baugh, 1999);
suitability for high-status employment (Giles, Wilson, & Conway, 1981); and
48 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

even attributions of guilt and criminality (e.g., Dixon & Mahoney, 2004;
Dixon, Mahoney, & Cocks, 2002).

Multiple Meanings
Of course, the general patterns outlined earlier do not always hold.
Communicative behaviors often have multiple social meanings and different
individuals may have different perceptions of the same behavior.
Accordingly, convergence and divergence can both entail costs as well as
rewards. For example, although the tendency of members of linguistic
minorities to converge to the language of the dominant majority may garner
them social rewards (e.g., economic opportunities) in some settings, it may
also lead to the potential loss of a valued aspect of their identity (see Marlow
& Giles, 2010), as well as ridicule and social marginalization from ingroup
members (Giles & Edwards, 2010; Hogg, D’Agata, & Abrams, 1989).
Even when convergence is positively evaluated, full convergence may not
always be appreciated by interactants. For example, Giles and Smith (1979)
found that full convergence on pronunciation, speech rate, and message
content was perceived as patronizing (i.e., overaccommodative) and
evaluated negatively. Conversely, convergence only on speech content and
speech rate was perceived more positively. Although divergence may be a
blow to recipients’ self-esteem, full convergence may also make them
uncomfortable. Giles and Smith (1979) suggested that people have different
tolerance levels for convergence and that any shifts beyond a person’s desired
(i.e., optimal) level will be evaluated negatively by recipients. A similar
argument was put forth by Preston (1981), who noted that full convergence
by foreignlanguage learners (i.e., native-like fluency) is often met with
distrust and perceived as controlling by native speakers (see also, Ross &
Shortreed, 1990).
Speakers’ notions of what constitutes adequate and optimal levels of
convergence or divergence are partially rooted in sociocultural norms for
intergroup contact. For instance, during intergender conversations, mutual
divergence on some speech characteristics (e.g., pitch) may be construed as
socially, if not sexually, appealing and desirable by both parties. Indeed, when
men and women interact, men often adopt more-masculine sounding voices
by lowering their pitch (Hogg, 1985) whereas women adopt more
femininesounding voices by raising their pitch (Montepare & Vega, 1988).
Although these are, objectively, instances of mutual divergence, they may
actually more accurately be labeled as “speech complementarity,” given that
they may involve psychologically convergent motives, with both parties
aiming for a nonverbal stance that conveys their respective gender identity
and appeal (Giles et al., 1991).
Perceptions and Attributions
How convergence and divergence are evaluated is partly based on the
attributions recipients make about those behaviors – that is, the motives and
intentions that they think caused it. Simard, Taylor, and Giles (1976) found
 Accommodative Strategies as Core of the Theory 49

that convergence was evaluated more favorably when it was attributed to a

speaker’s desire to break down cultural barriers (i.e., attribution of deliberate,
positive intent), rather than to situational pressures (i.e., not intentional on the
part of the speaker). Conversely, speakers who diverged were evaluated less
negatively when the behavior was attributed to external pressures, rather than
their own malevolent intent (see also Gasiorek, 2013; Gasiorek & Giles,
2012; Chapter 5 this volume).
Attributional processes are susceptible to a range of biases, particularly
during intergroup encounters. People tend to favor ingroup over outgroup
members and make differential attributions about their behavior (Hewstone,
Rubin, & Willis, 2002; Howard & Rothbart, 1980). In particular, they are
more likely to attribute socially desirable behaviors to positive dispositions of
ingroup than outgroup members, and socially undesirable behaviors to
negative dispositions of outgroup than ingroup members (Hewstone, 1990;
Hewstone & Jaspars, 1984).
Other studies have suggested additional factors that may mediate the
relationship between speakers’ behaviors and recipients’ evaluations (see
Dorjee, Giles, & Barker, 2010), as well as other outcomes, such as attributed
intent (Gasiorek & Giles, 2012; Giles & Gasiorek, 2013). Myers, Giles, Reid,
and Nabi (2009) found that intergroup sensitivity partially mediated the
relationship between police officers’ perceived accommodation and
participants’ perceptions of those officers’ competence and social
attractiveness. Additionally, other studies of police-civilian encounters in
China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Guam, Canada, and the United States have
shown that trust mediates the relationship between perceived accommodation
and compliance (Barker et al., 2008; Hajek et al., 2008; see also, Scissors,
Gill, Geraghty, & Gergle, 2009).

Principles of Accommodation
Over the decades, there have been many publications continually refining and
elaborating CAT’s proposition format (see Gallois et al., 2005). In their recent
review of CAT, Dragojevic, Gasiorek, and Giles (2016) proposed six,
arguably more parsimonious than hitherto, principles summarizing the
theory’s central ideas. In light of the foregoing and Rogerson’s (2015) recent
work, we refine and elaborate the Principles of Accommodation as follows:
1. Communication accommodation is a ubiquitous and fundamental aspect
ofsocial interaction that serves two major functions: first, it helps facilitate
coherent interaction and, second, it allows interactants to manage social
distance between one another.
2. Individuals have expectations about what constitutes appropriate and
desirable accommodation in context, and these expectations are informed
by the sociohistorical context of interaction, interpersonal and intergroup
histories, and idiosyncratic preferences.
3. The degree and quality of individuals’ accommodation in interaction is a
function of both their motivation to adjust and their ability to adjust.
50 Marko Dragojevic, Jessica Gasiorek and Howard Giles

4. Speakers will over time increasingly accommodate to the

communicativepatterns they believe characteristic of their interactants, the
more they wish affiliate (i.e., decrease social distance) with their
interactants on either an individual or group level, or make their message
more easily understood.
5. As a function of the intentions and motives believed to underlie a
speaker’s communication, perceived accommodation increasingly and
cumulatively decreases perceived social distance, enhances interactional
satisfaction and positive evaluations of speakers, and facilitates mutual
understanding.
6. Speakers will over time increasingly nonaccommodate to the
communicative patterns they believed characteristic of their interactants,
the more they wish disaffiliate (i.e., increase social distance) with their
interactants on either an individual or group level, or make their message
more difficult to understand.
7. As a function of the intentions and motives believed to underlie a
speaker’s communication and the potential consequences of associated
outcomes, perceived nonaccommodation increasingly and cumulatively
increases perceived social distance, diminishes interactional satisfaction
and positive evaluations of speakers, and impedes mutual understanding.

While these seven Principles concentrate on the individual and his/her

interpersonal and intergroup motivations, perceptions, and outcomes,
contextual and interactional dynamics are not highlighted. Chapter 5 attends
to the latter processes by its focus on talk in action, and this uniquely invites
an eighth Principle to foreground formally such concerns in CAT.
Of theoretical frameworks seeking to understand how, why, and when
people adjust their communicative behaviors relative to one another (see
Chapter 1, this volume), CAT has been recognized as “one of the most
influential behavioral theories of communication” (Littlejohn & Foss, 2005,
p. 147) and, as the meta-analysis of recent studies attests (see Chapter 4, this
volume), has garnered considerable empirical support. It has been invoked
across a wide range of cultures and languages as well as distinct intergroup
settings (see Chapter 7, this volume), using a range of methodologies (see
Chapter 6, this volume). Furthermore, it has been fruitfully applied to a wide
variety of applied contexts, including medical, health, legal, and
organizational spheres (see Chapters 8 & 9, this volume). The rest of this
volume directly speaks to this diversity as it will to future challenges on the
horizon (see Chapter 9, this volume).

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